The Battle for De dust
by VideoBrit
Summary: A fort in Africa that stores chemical weapons, guarding chemical weapons, is attacked by the 1337 Krew terrorist group. Based on the popular Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life. Please R+R, this is my first action fic! Set on the de_dust map.


Disclaimer: Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and all that crap belong to Sierra and Valve. Now leave me alone.  
  
This fic is my first attempt at serious stuff (everything else has been comedy). It was inspired by the popular online Counter-Strike mod for the great game Half-Life. It is set on the de_dust map. Now on to the action.....  
  
It was midday. The sun beat down on the old, deserted fort.... at least, deserted to those who didn't know better. It had once been a stronghold for the Foreign Legion, but they had abandoned it long ago. It was positioned in a far corner of the Gobi Desert. Virtually no one knew that it existed. Those who did - mostly desert nomads or Bedouin - steered clear of it, as it was supposedly haunted by the ghosts of those who had died there. In other words, it was the perfect place to store a secret stash of chemical weapons.  
  
The French government had bought it from the legion decades ago. They used the fort to stockpile whatever chemical or biological agents that they could not keep in France. In the possibility that World War III might start, the fort was a perfect place to spring a surprise attack. The government had never needed the fort, and they hoped they never would, but it was still there, kept under wraps and guarded by France's elite GIGN counter-terrorism force in a distant part of Africa. The GIGN who guarded it jokingly dubbed it La maison des depiculeurs, the house of defilers. Considering what was being stocked there, the name was not inappropriate.  
  
Jean-Luc Belleau yawned and stretched under a shady archway, one of the few protections from the sun that the fort offered. Idly twirling his FN P90 sub-machine gun, he wondered how his mother and sister Sophie were doing back in the village where he was born, a smallish place in Provence named Rousillon. Rousillon was famous in the area for its reddish-colored cliffs and earth, filled with ochre. His brother Tierry had also joined GIGN, but was currently on leave, keeping the two women company in the small town.  
  
He smiled as he thought of Sophie. She would be 15 now, taking the bus down to the large school in Avignon where she did so well. He had done fairly well in studies, but never outstandingly so, just well enough to pass without being frowned upon. He had always had many friends in school, though, which Sophie didn't so much... not that she was unpopular...  
  
"Jean-Luc!" The sound of his friend Joseph calling his name snapped Belleau out of his reverie. "Veux-tu manger ton dejeuner avec moi maintenant?"  
  
Jean-Luc smiled at his ami. "Not just yet," he called back in French. "I still have to patrol the top walkway. Give me five minutes." Joseph nodded to show that he understood as Belleau strolled leisurely toward the ramp that would take him up to the "ramparts" of the fort.  
  
He sighed. It was actually quite boring here. He had signed up with GIGN with the hope of stealthy assassination assignments, high-tension firefights, all the movie stuff. Instead, what he got was six months of hard training and then a long stay at a fort which no one had ever made an offensive move against since the days when it belonged to the Legion, but still had to be closely guarded.  
  
As he walked along, constantly checking the SMG for jams or other problems. Not that he had ever actually used it... As he looked out along the vast desert, he suddenly found himself thinking of the red cliffs of Rousillon again, the memory triggered by the gargantuan expanse of dark orange sand. It was said that the reason they were that color was because, in medieval times, the lady of Rousillon had an affair with a handsome hunter. Her jealous husband arranged to go on a bird-catching trip with the hunter, then killed him and removed his heart and head. He brought back the two bodyparts and had the heart cooked up and served for lunch to his wife. After she had eaten, he walked in with the head on a silver plate and told her what she had just consumed. Driven mad, the wife sprung from her seat, ran out of the house, and threw herself off the cliff. She was buried alongside her dead lover, but their spirits were not satisfied and their blood leaked through the earth, dying it red. The story had always revolted and fascinated Jean-Luc at the same time.  
  
So it was strangely fitting when the silenced sniper bullet smashed into the front of his face, the force of it knocking Jean-Luc Belleau's corpse off the walkway and back into the main courtyard of the fort, his blood mixing with the sand and coloring it red.  
  
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The sniper swore violently under his breath and tossed his silenced Arctic Warfare Magnum sniper rifle to the ground. He had truly put his foot in it. He'd tried to line up his shot so that the GIGN guard's filthy body would simply slump over the edge of the walkway, not giving away the sniper's position, but a scorpion had been crawling toward the little hollow near the fort in which the sniper was crouching. He had turned and smashed the scorpion with the butt of his rifle, killing it, but the force of the blow jostled the trigger, firing the bullet at the wrong angle. The stray shot had somehow managed to collide with the guard, but it wasn't the beautiful shot the sniper had wanted. The guard's body would be discovered in the fort within minutes, totally giving away the sniper's position. It had all been going like clockwork before, too. The sniper, who was part of a major Middle-Eastern terrorist group and dressed in khaki pants and a green top and sunglasses, had covered his body with a tarpaulin with sand attatched to it and crawled like a snake up to the fort. But that damn scorpion....  
  
The terrorist had no time to think about it any longer. The radio at his hip crackled, "Zeta, what's going on? We heard the shot, but from the sounds you made, it sounds like it didn't go the way we hoped."  
  
Zeta pulled the walkie-talkie up to his head. "I'm sorry, the rifle went off accidentally while I was trying to squash a scorpion. The guard's body landed in the middle of the courtyard. They'll discover him pretty soon. I'm afraid that you may have to call in the rest of the brothers for Plan B, Alpha."  
  
The man at the other end swore. "Honestly, Zeta, can't you do anything right? First that botch-up in Italy, where your laziness got all the hostages and most of the brothers killed, and now this! I thought you were supposed to be a sniper, rot you! There will be consequences for this, Zeta..."  
  
The sniper was visibly trembling by now. "I promise to do better in the future, sir...."  
  
His superior, Alpha, gave a derisive snort on the other end. "Pity that I'm not promising to give you the chance to! But in the meantime, I've had to send out the helicopter with the rest of the brothers in it. However, they will need a diversion. I command you to blow open those old wooden doors at the front with a grenade, then run in and cause some havoc with your sidearm. Take the GIGN pigs' attention away from the courtyard!"  
  
Zeta gasped. This was suicide. Not only would the grenade instantly draw all troops to his position, but his sidearm was a Glock 18 - one of the weakest pistols currently on the market. Because he had to pay so much for his powerful sniper rifle, he couldn't buy a very powerful handgun. And he couldn't use his sniper rifle because the silencer would take away the diversionary aspect to it. "But, sir, I -"  
  
"DO IT!" screamed Alpha. "If the helicopter spots you on the outside of the fort when it arrives, it has orders to gun you down, you worthless heap of offal! Now blow those doors open and get the hell in there, whether it kills you or not! Over and out!" The radio emitted a 'psssccch' of static.  
  
Zeta sighed. Well, he didn't have much choice. He could either go inside and just-possibly-stand-a-chance of surviving the suicidal 'diversion', or he could stay out here and be murdered by his own comrades - there was no way to hide from them, as like the rest of the 1337 Krew (the name of his group), he had been implanted with a tracking microchip. His eyes reflected fear as he reached for his belt and pulled out the grenade and Glock.  
  
In the distance, the small, black shape of a helicopter appeared....  
  
Well, what do y'all think? Please read and review! Chapter 2 coming soon..... 


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